Chapter 19

It was twenty after eight when Westervelt found himself back at the communications room with Smith. Rosenkrantz had alerted them to a message coming in from Syssoka.

“They didn’t expect to hit us during office hours,” he explained, “but as long as you’re here, I thought maybe you’d like to get it fresh.”

Smith had told the girls to pass the word to Lydman and Parrish, and Westervelt had followed him down the hall with the feeling that he had displayed his eye under the good lighting long enough. Now they listened as a slim, brown-haired man with a faintly scholarly aura completed his report on the escape of Louis Taranto and Harley Meyers, spacers.

Joe Rosenkrantz was fiddling with an auxiliary screen and murmuring into another microphone.

“ ... so it was a rather close call, even though the formula you sent us appears to have worked perfectly,” said the scholarly man. “I have not been able to determine exactly what caused the delay on the part of the Syssokans, since it seemed imprudent to display my little flying spy-eye where it might be seen, or even damaged.”

“Maybe you can pick up some rumors in the future,” suggested Smith. “If you do, we’d appreciate hearing them, to add to our file and make the case as complete as possible.”

The transmission lag was much less than that occurring with Trident. The D.I.R. man on Syssoka agreed to forward any subsequent discoveries.

“Those spacers you contacted are already heading out-system,” he told Smith. “I think they did a nice, clean job. It was too bad that they were seen at all, of course, but it will be news to me if the Syssokans drop around with any embarrassing questions.”

“Well, there is a large foreign quarter there,” Smith recalled. “Why should they suspect Terrans, after all?”

“Oh, they will, they will. They suspect everyone; but they must know so little that I feel sure I can bluff them. I can prove that I was here at the official residence all day.”

“Good!” said Smith. “Just in passing, I take it that no one was much hurt?”

The man on Syssokan grinned briefly.

“No one on our side,” he said, “although I understand the prisoners were suffering some from exhaustion and dehydration. This Louis Taranto seems to be quite a lad. There is reason to believe that he killed two or three of his guards with his bare hands--at least I saw the burial party carrying bodies with them as they marched the rest of the way back to the city.”

Smith laughed.

“I’ll have to add a note opposite his name and contact him. I could use a field agent like that! Well, my operator tells me I have another call coming in. Thanks for your work on this.”

“A pleasure,” said the man on Syssoka. “I really didn’t expect to contact you directly; my relative-time atlas must be a little old.”

“No, it’s just that we never sleep, you know,” quipped Smith, and signed off.

He looked around, saw that it was Parrish who had entered, and added, “At least, it looks as if we’ll never sleep. I’m getting tired of it myself.”

“So is everybody except Joe, here,” said Parrish. “A com man isn’t normal anyway.”

“You gotta learn not to let all this stuff coming through bother you,” said Rosenkrantz wisely. “If I soaked up all these crazy calls, I’d have nightmares every day. As it is, I’m as normal as anybody when I leave here.”

“You haven’t been with us long enough,” said Smith. “What else do you have there?”

“There was a routine memo to make a check with the planet Greenhaven,” said Rosenkrantz. “I cleared it when a good time came. The D.I.R. station there pretended not to know what I was talking about.”

“What?” yelped Smith. “Don’t tell me we goofed on another one!”

“I don’t think so,” said Rosenkrantz. “While you were talking to Syssoka, a spaceship named Vulpecula called, said there was reason to believe the Greenhaven D.I.R. was locally monitored.”

“Tapped or the scrambler system broken,” said Parrish. “What does this ship want to talk about?”

“The Ringstad case.”

“Joe, godammit, who says you’re normal?” demanded Smith. “I bet we’ve sprung another one! Two in one night--we’re coming out with a good average after all. Get them on the screen before I pop my tanks!”

Westervelt listened to the transmission from the spaceship. Without the help of a planetary relay at the far end, it tended to be a trifle weak and wavery, but the essentials came through. He left Smith and Parrish patting each other on the back and went back to tell the girls about it.

They clustered around him in the main office, even Pauline leaving her cubicle for a moment and keeping one ear pointed at the switchboard inside.

“You should have heard Smitty conning her out of writing us up for the news magazines,” said Westervelt. “She seems to be pretty famous in her line.”

“What was she like?” asked Simonetta.

“She looked blondish, but the color wasn’t coming across too well. Not bad looking, in a breezy sort of way. The agent that sprung her had to skip too, because he thought the Greenhavens--they call them Greenies--had spotted his disguise.”

“Oh, boy!” breathed Pauline. “The cops must have been hot on their trail!”

“Either that, or he wanted to go along with her for other reasons,” said Westervelt. “They seemed kind of chummy.”

“Can they do that?” asked Beryl. “I mean, without orders, and all that?”

Westervelt grinned.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, “but he’s doing it. He can’t go back now. Anyway, Smitty simmered down fast and promised a draft for expenses would be waiting for him when the ship made planetfall. Technically, the D.I.R. ought to pay, because it turns out the guy is on their rolls and was only working with us temporarily.”

Simonetta nodded wisely.

“You watch our boss,” she predicted. “He’ll have this man on our lists. He always gets free with the money when he sees a good prospect from the main branch. Even if they stay in the honest side of the outfit, they co-operate with the back room here.”

Smith walked in with Parrish, beaming. His eye found Westervelt.

“Willie,” he said, “make a note, and tomorrow look up the planet Rotchen II. I have to send credits, and I didn’t want to say into wide, wide space that I didn’t know where it is. Bad for the department’s prestige!”

He looked about genially.

“I see you’ve told the news,” he commented. “It was a lift for me too. We haven’t done too badly, after all. Won two, lost one--damn!--and one is still a stalemate.”

“Anyone tell Bob?” asked Parrish quietly.

They all exchanged searching glances. Smith began to lose some of his ebullience. After a moment, he turned to Pauline.

“Buzz his office!” he said in a preoccupied tone.

Westervelt tried to subdue a mild chill along the backbone as Pauline gave Smith a wide-eyed look and slipped into her cubbyhole.

He couldn’t have phoned downstairs, he reassured himself. Pauline would say all the lines were busy, or cut off or something. But what if he looked out a window?

Smith had sauntered over to the center desk, where he waited beside the phone. It seemed to be taking Pauline a long time.

“Check with Joe,” advised Parrish. “Then try around the other rooms. Ten to one he’s in the lab.”

“Has anyone seen him in the last half hour?” asked Smith.

Westervelt pointed out that he had been the chief’s company in the communications room. The girls had not seen Lydman, but admitted that he might have gone past in the corridor without their having noticed.